Space Elevator Conference Prompts Lofty Questions

itwbennett writes "Even the most ardent enthusiasts gathered at the annual Space Elevator Conference on Friday don't expect it to be built anytime soon, but that doesn't stop them from dreaming, planning, and trying to solve some of the more vexing problems. One of the trickiest questions is who's going to pay for the operational costs when an elevator is eventually built. 'It's been nine years we've been looking for someone' to study that, said Bryan Laubscher, one of the leading space elevator enthusiasts and principle at Odysseus Technologies, a company working on high-strength materials."

The major issues and such

[JoshuaZ]

Anyone interested in this issue should read the NIAC report http://www.spaceelevator.com/docs/521Edwards.pdf [spaceelevator.com] which discusses the issues in detail and the technical problems. Space elevators would make space travel much cheaper. But the technical issues are immense. The NIAC report carefully outlines the major issues and how they might be handled. We would need to make extremely high quality carbon nanotubes at an immense scale. We also would need to put into space a structure orders of magnitude larger than anything we've put in space. Indeed, a space elevator would be one of the largest physical structures ever made by humans. And the engineering hurdles, such as the problems of wind in the lower atmosphere, are massive. But there's nothing about the idea that is physically impossible. The primary issues are issues of scale. And the issues are being worked on. Right now, there's a lot of work on making carbon nanotubes of high quality in a large scale. Since such nanotubes would have many different applications there's a lot of funding for that and that will likely be extremely beneficial to humanity well before it scales up to anything near that needed for a space elevator. Since the nanotube manufacturing is the primary technical hurdle, this is a good thing. I doubt we will see a space elevator in my lifetime, but maybe my children, or their children, will see it. And on that thing ribbon, space travel will finally become as cheap as so many have envisioned it.

Re:$18B

[Anonymous Coward]

That number is way lowballed. What, are they thinking the price of the nanotube cable is comparable to the market price of carbon?

Anyone dumb enough to pay to build a space elevator this early in the game will lose their money.

Seriously, it's an elevator from the ground to one point in geosynchronous orbit. A payload released at almost any other altitude will need reaction mass to establish a stable orbit, most of which will be expended in the direction of the cable and thus wear it down. (The exceptions are payloads released near geosynchronous orbit which will establish elliptical or parabolic orbits.) Finally, other satellites and debris at lower orbits especially, will impact the cable, both damaging it and setting up waves which will need to be safely dissipated somehow. A paint chip at 500 miles up is going to hit at around 17k miles/hr. and will have plenty of kinetic energy that needs to go somewhere.

Commercially, this is useless, even if you could build it easily and cheaply. It's an engineering nightmare, and no amount of focus on the easy parts of the design -- and the material is the easy part -- will change that.

Re:Elevator to nowhere

[Baloroth]

Do you know anything about space elevators? Seriously. They're a great idea. Practically speaking, they are also very difficult, but if we could build one, the cost of traveling to orbit would become relatively speaking extremely cheap (technically, the energy requirements would stay the same. But the delta-v required would become as low as we please, making very cheap and low-power sources effective). Long term, unless we find a much better way to get to space, they are very likely to be built.

I agree that that is a very stupid question. Obviously, whoever uses it would pay for its use. Aka, commercial companies, NASA, military, etc. Since lots of people want to put stuff into space, lots of people could fund its operation .Probably it would be run by a company or government who would charge for its use (preferably, there would be at least two to introduce competition). That part is relatively easy. Its construction, on the other hand, is quite a problem. Financially and technically. However, it is a very good idea. Keep in mind, 150 years ago space travel on rockets was also just an idea in a few peoples minds. Turns out it isn't such a bad idea after all.

Plus, having an actual stairway to heaven would be pretty awesome...